Stand Up for Nontheistic Military Service Members NOW

We just got word that an amendment crucial to our nontheistic service men and women will be voted on tomorrow and we need your help.

Tomorrow, members of the House Armed Services Committee will vote on an amendment that would allow nontheistic chaplains in the in the Chaplain Corps of the Armed Forces.

The amendment to H.R. 1960—which would fund the military for fiscal year 2014—is crucial to the roughly 23 percent of men and women in the armed services who are religiously unaffiliated “nones” or atheists. The official amendment language has not yet been made available, but is expected to be voted on tomorrow.

Why are chaplains so important to nontheistic service members? Why don’t they just talk to a psychiatrist or counselor? The answers may surprise you:

Military psychiatrists and counselors are an inadequate substitution for chaplains because information discussed in sessions with a counselor or a psychiatrist can be shared with military personnel and possibly harm a service member’s future military career.

The chaplain-patient relationship enjoys more confidentiality then the psychiatrist or counselor relationship does.

Studies indicate that service men and women fail to seek the needed help from psychiatrists and counselors because of the stigma that doing so makes them weak.

Our nontheistic service members sacrifice for all of us daily—now they need you to sacrifice just a minute of your time to write your representative and urge them to support this amendment-- especially if your representative sits on the House Armed Services Committee.